DANNY'S SCOOTER

Christmas was terrific this year. Danny's favorite present was his scooter, followed by his magnetic fishing game. He can ride the scooter in the house because we have no carpet and he already has a bike outside. Yesterday he told me he can even drive on carpet and I told him that we didn't have any. He was adament that we did and said he rolled over it just fine. I went and looked in the hallway and sure enough, the bath mat was there. Ha Ha, I showed you mom! He likes the scooter so much that yesterday he rode it to the bathroom to "get there faster".
For those of you who don't watch "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" on the Disney channel, you are so lucky. However, I am very thankful that we are out of the Little Einstein phase and now likes Handy Manny the most. In the show, Christopher Robin is replaced by a girl named Darby. Most of the Disney cartoons here are dubbed in British English so she has an accent. I don't remember now if she is actually British like Christopher Robin or not. Anyway, in the show, when there is a problem the "Super Sleuths" (Darby, Tigger & Pooh) are called to help solve the problem. They go to the "Changing Tree" and get new outfits including a helmet and pads for Darby to wear while riding on her scooter. The helmet that Santa broght him had Tiger and Pooh on them. I think it was a total coincidence. For the first day he was riding around on the scooter asking me if I had any problems he could help solve. It was fun to send him on several quests to solve problems including putting away the silverware out of the dishwasher and wiping off the countertop.
This Christmas there were only 1 item under the tree for Jusitn and I. He got the new John Grisham book and I got a help book on working with Photoshop. I was a little bit concerned that they wouldn't get here in time. Justin ordered them in November and they came on the 23rd. This year, we decided that we would pay off Justin's student loans for our present.

CHRISTMAS EVE

We had a terrific Christmas. They gave Danny a remote control car, Justin some chocolate, and for me, a beautiful compact mirror from Egypt.

SWIMMING ON CHRISTMAS EVE

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On Christmas we invited our friends, the Vaticans, over for swimming and Christmas dinner. We had so much fun in the pool. Justin and Joy had races and Justin won and Danny challenged them both on too. For that race, Danny won with Joy second (only using his arms, no legs) and Justin third (only using 1 arm, no legs). They heat the pool in the winter and cool it in the summer. The hot tub isn't working though. Probably the funniest moment was when they played "Chicken". Danny took out Jenny pretty fast. We had lots of laughs and fun.

TRICKS ON A BIKE

Danny riding his tricycle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3os7MiFbEl4

ADOPTION

So tonight Danny and I were working on “his” blog and he didn’t like the background I chose so he picked a different one. He wanted one to look like wood but we couldn’t find that so I told him that once we paged through 26 pages of backgrounds, we would keep the one I had chosen. On page 22 we settled on “Sassy Santa”.

After we changed backgrounds we looked at the other family blogs. On Marta’s there is a baby countdown and a picture of what the baby looks like. I showed it to him and talked to him about the baby in Marta’s tummy. Maybe an hour earlier, Justin had told me that one of his BYU friends had adopted their second child and sent us a photo of them. Justin showed him the baby’s picture and said that she was adopted. We discussed adoption and that our next baby would be adopted and he understood it. We explained that he was adopted, that mommy couldn’t grow a baby in her tummy so someone else did it and gave him to us to take care of. “Forever?” “Yes Daniel, forever”. Justin told him that Heavenly Father specifically chosen him to come to our family. He then told us that our baby would grow in 8 months. I said 8 or 9 and he said, “89 months.”

Justin asked him what he would name a baby sister and he said, “Pubsy.” I told him that Pubsy would be her nick name and I wanted to name her Emma Elizabeth. He adamantly said that Pubsy would be her name and “the other name” would be her nick name. I explained that on the papers with his name on them he had 3 names, Daniel Joseph Hutzley and that she would need 3 names too. He said “her name should be Pubsy Joseph John.” I said I wanted it to be Emma but we would call her Pubsy for her every day name, just like we call him Danny even though on the papers it says Daniel. He didn’t like that idea. He wanted to call her Pubsy Joseph Hutzley.

DANNY'S THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR TRIP

Danny liked the food. "I loved the big boat's ice cream and the garden cafe that has a big giant machine that makes ice cream. I loved the cruisers. There is a Garden Cafe that is a big cafe that carries lots and lots of food. The outside doors slide open. There's lots of elevators that look fun to go up and down on. They go up and down. The kids club has lots of doors and bathrooms. The Treetop Kids Club. I played there and they painted faces. The face painting just comes off too and that's good.

I like the pyramids. In the ship, sometimes the door slides closed when you get close to the door. They had the WII but no WII fit game.
I really loved it. There are good doors that work and go closed and go when you open them and close. The camel was going high, too high, I couldn't even hold onto his hump. The mummy can stand still she really laid down and died.

The watersilde is only for 6 years old so I had to go with me with daddy. The sphynx stood still that had hidden door inside.

THANKSGIVING

We took a bus transfer from the ship to the airport. The checkout process was smooth and we got to the airport about an hour too early as we needed to wait to check-in our baggage. Rachel used the time to take photographs for her Photography class. The theme for the week was “stranded” and she and Daniel met a bunch of high school bank kids on a trip that were stranded at the airport. We got through security and enjoyed walking through the airport shops in Barcelona and had a lunch at McDonalds before passing through the passport control.

Our flight was delayed by about a half hour but otherwise we had a nice journey back to Istanbul Airport. The Istanbul Airport layover this time was going to be shorter by a few hours than our first but our flight ended up being delayed back to Kuwait by about two hours. We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at Burger King in Istanbul Airport and spend time entertaining Daniel and waiting for our flight. It really had been a great once in a lifetime vacation and it really was a special Thanksgiving that we could see so much of the world that we never thought we might see.

Once we got to our gate assignment and found out about the long delay we had a late night snack of a chicken sandwich, cheesecake, chips, and water while waiting. Daniel fell asleep watching Monster’s Inc on the computer before we got on the bus to get from the gate to the stairway onto the plane. Daddy carried Daniel and a backpack while Mom juggled two carry-on suitcases. We got back to Kuwait International Airport at 4:15 am and were able to call our Driver who was waiting for us. We got back home safely just after 5am and slept in until about 12:30 in the afternoon.